November 1, 2006

Gallaudet protests and trenches

One of the remarkable things about the Gallaudet student protests in the last few weeks is how rare such direct-action protests are in K-12 education. I was speaking with a student today about Ira Katznelson's City Trenches (1981) and realized that his point about the channeling of conflict into routinized paths is true of K-12 special education: through its history, the primary paths for addressing conflict are consultation, lobbying, administrative (due-process) hearings, and the courts. When was the last time you heard of mass protests about the quality of special education?